


and you don't care if you're lost

by nilyn (escherzo)



Category: Bandom, My Chemical Romance
Genre: Alternate Universe - Supernatural, Angst, Car Accidents, Gen, Ghosts, Mental Health Issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-04-14
Updated: 2008-04-14
Packaged: 2017-11-18 15:35:36
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,613
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/562631
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/escherzo/pseuds/nilyn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mikey reaches out to hug him and gets nothing but air, and Gerard is still smiling in that funny way, looking down at the ground. “You suck at hugs, seriously,” Mikey mumbles, voice choked. Gerard just nods.</p>
            </blockquote>





	and you don't care if you're lost

Mikey opens his eyes and all he can see is white. 

The room is bright, bright white, walls and ceiling and sheets, and the world is fuzzy around the edges. He frowns, squints, trying to get the world to come into focus, but it won’t. He tries to bring his hand up to push his glasses higher but it won’t move.

It’s only then that he notices his arm is in a cast. 

He wants to call for someone but no sound comes out when he tries. Where am I? he wants to ask. What happened? And most importantly: Where’s Gerard?

And only then do his memories start splintering back, brief flashes of screeching tires and shattering glass and somebody help me oh God somebody help me. He’s alone now, and all he can hear is the steady beeping of machines around him.

An hour later, a nurse comes in and behind him, his mother. She sits, clutches his good hand tight enough to hurt, eyes shut against the image in front of her, her son hooked up to machines, weak and pale and wrapped in bandages.

“Where’s Gerard?” He has to ask.

She doesn’t say anything.

 

He finds out a week later, staring down at a fresh headstone.

He’s surrounded by people, near-strangers that keep coming up and clutching him tight, whispering “I’m sorry” like they don’t know what else to say. There are headstones all around him, rows and rows of them, and he shuts his eyes like if he doesn’t see the grave marked ‘Gerard Arthur Way’ it isn’t real. He’s in black (he’s always in black) and so is everyone else, and he doesn’t even care about the murmurs of worry as he kneels down and presses his forehead against cool stone. After what seems like years, he can hear the soft footsteps as people shuffle away, leave him pressed against his brother’s grave. Distantly, he can feel rain falling, and he doesn’t even care that he’s getting soaked to the skin.

That isn’t why he’s shivering, anyway.

“Did you seriously think you could get rid of me that easily?” 

The voice is heartbreakingly familiar and Mikey’s heart skips a beat. He doesn’t want to open his eyes and find out it’s not real.

“Come on, get up, god.”

He lets his eyes open, slow, and looks behind him. Gerard is standing there, arms folded, looking like he doesn’t care that he’s staring at his own grave. Mikey gets up so fast his knees almost give out. 

“I knew they were lying.” 

Gerard smiles, slow and sad. “Yeah.”

Mikey reaches out to hug him and gets nothing but air, and Gerard is still smiling in that funny way, looking down at the ground. “You suck at hugs, seriously,” Mikey mumbles, voice choked. Gerard just nods. 

“Yeah, I know. Sorry.” He reaches out and wraps his arms around Mikey, and maybe Mikey is imagining it, but he can feel the warmth around him.

“Don’t leave, okay?”

“I won’t. You know that.”

 

No one says anything when Mikey insists on setting out a place for Gerard every day. Gerard never comes to eat with them, but it doesn’t matter.

“You’re not hungry?” He asks it every time, and Gerard just shakes his head, smiles up at Mikey and goes back to drawing. He makes hundreds of sketches, just like he used to (Mikey is proud of him, he really is, because Gerard is getting back into his normal routines even though he himself can’t). 

When Mikey tries to hang one up, tack it to the wall, like he’s showing it to the world (even though no one but him will ever see), the ink bleeds off the page, dripping downwards until it’s just a blank sheet again. Gerard doesn’t say anything, just goes back to sketching.

He’s made enough sketches to fill three books, but he never seems to need a new one. 

 

Mikey notices that Gerard isn’t sleeping when Gerard’s bed gets taken away. He shares Mikey’s bed then, propping himself up on one elbow and just watching as Mikey breathes. If Mikey was awake to see it, he would notice that Gerard’s chest doesn’t rise and fall. He never is.

When Mikey wakes up and sees Gerard in the same position, he tries to hug him tight again (still nothing but air, air and a faint lingering warmth). “Aren’t you tired?” he asks, eyebrows scrunching in worry. Gerard doesn’t look tired, but. He knows how Gerard gets sometimes.

“I’ll get you some coffee.” Before Gerard can say anything he’s up, grabbing two mugs and pouring them both a cup. He sips his own on the way back to their room, clutching Gerard’s tight to make sure he doesn’t spill any. 

“I don’t want any,” Gerard says as soon as it’s offered, shaking his head with the sad, tiny smile Mikey is starting to find familiar. 

“Come on, drink it.” Mikey thrusts the mug forward, and coffee sloshes over the edge, onto Gerard. He looks down and it’s staining the sheets instead, dark against the whiteness. “Gerard?” His stomach lurches and he has to close his eyes against the sight, force himself not to think about the way he can’t see stains on Gerard.

“I don’t want any. It’s fine.” 

Mikey’s hands are shaking so badly when he tries to set Gerard’s cup down beside his own that he drops it and it shatters, bright white ceramic against the darkness of the floor. 

“Are you okay?” Gerard leans over, staring at the shards on the floor and Mikey’s face, gone white.

“Y—Yeah.”

He isn’t.

 

Gerard doesn’t smoke anymore. Mikey gets him an entire carton and he shakes his head, turns it down. He doesn’t do anything anymore, except watch Mikey sleep and draw and watch movies with Mikey, sitting too far apart on the couch. But he laughs at all of Mikey’s jokes and Mikey is still determined that Gerard isn’t broken. Even if he doesn’t leave for college anymore. Mikey isn’t going to judge, and if staying home (home with him) makes Gerard happy, then so be it.

He takes out a pack, smokes it himself just to have the familiar smell, one after the other until he makes himself sick.

“It’s not healthy,” Gerard tells him, eyes sad, fingers stroking his arm and feeling like nothing at all.

“I know.” He doesn’t look at Gerard as he lights another one, hands shaking.

“I don’t want you following me too soon, Mikey. Stop. Please.”

“What do you mean following? You’re right here.”

Gerard says nothing, just grits his teeth like it hurts to hear. 

 

“Can you get my brother a job?” Mikey asks one day, lounging against the wall in the music section of Barnes and Noble. He hates to do this, but Gerard won’t leave the house for anything and he doesn’t want to be alone for the long hours he has to spend at work. It’s selfish, he knows it’s selfish, but he knows he can do it. 

He’s friends with the manager, after all. Brian, who gives him a strange look and says “I’ll try,” wandering off into another section to pretend to think.

The thing is, he’s known Mikey for almost a year and Mikey doesn’t have a brother. So he shrugs it off, figuring it’s a stupid practical joke. Even if it doesn’t seem like the kind of thing Mikey normally does. 

“Yeah, sure, I can get him a job in books,” he says, coming back, and starts to genuinely worry when Mikey’s face lights up. Like he really believes it.

It’s worse when Mikey spends the following weeks hanging around the comics section, smiling and talking to nothing.

 

Gerard doesn’t drive. Mikey goes to concerts, brings him along, but Gerard always climbs into the passenger seat before Mikey can say anything. Every time, his parents ask if he’s sure he wants to go alone. 

But he isn’t alone, he’s never alone. They’re just joking around. 

They stand at the back of the crowd—Gerard doesn’t want to get lost in the crowds, doesn’t like the crush of people at the front—and at one, he turns to Gerard, eyes shining. “We should start a band. I mean it.”

“Yeah.” Gerard doesn’t smile, but he moves closer. 

“No, I mean it. I’ve got a good name and everything. It’s from a book I was looking at. It was just Chemical Romance but wouldn’t it be cool if you put on a ‘my’, made it My Chemical Romance?”

“… Mikey.” Gerard sighs, and maybe not sleeping is getting to him, because he looks tired, eyes sad.

“What?”

“Nothing. We. We could do that.”

 

“Sing something.” Mikey holds the tape recorder up to Gerard. They’re sitting on Mikey’s bed, and it’s barely noon, but it’s Sunday and Mikey has the day off. “Please?”

“Okay.”

Mikey hits the record button and Gerard begins to sing, soft and hesitant at first but gaining strength as he goes. It’s an old song, the kind they hear on the radio but don’t know the name to, and something in the way Gerard is singing it sends a shiver down Mikey’s spine. His voice is raw, untrained, and it breaks as he hits a high note but it’s the most haunting thing Mikey has ever heard.

And he has it on tape.

He clicks play. 

All he can hear is silence, silence and his own ragged breathing in the quiet of the room. Hits stop. Rewind. His heart is pounding. There has to be something. Maybe if he just listens more carefully--

He presses the button again. 

Click. Click.

Click.

Nothing.

**Author's Note:**

> ... Yeah, I'm sorry about this. Obviously not real. Blame whoever gave me a love for kicking people in the teeth with angst I suppose.


End file.
